Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, launched last Wednesday, August 2, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Astronaut Woody Hoburg, assisted by his colleague Frank Rubio, will soon begin the slow maneuver to move the Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Unity module after about two hours.
Tomorrow, the International Space Station crew is scheduled to open the Cygnus spacecraft’s hatch and at that point, the cargo will be slowly brought to the Station. The NG-19 mission is almost accomplished because the Cygnus spacecraft can’t land and when it comes back into Earth’s atmosphere it will disintegrate. For this reason, it will be used to get rid of components that failed or that can’t be used any longer on the International Space Station: all of that will be loaded on the Cygnus and will disintegrate along with it.
The Cygnus named “S.S. Laurel Clark” is scheduled to leave the International Space Station in a few months. In these cases, a tentative date for the cargo spacecraft departure is given, however, it can be modified because it also depends on other tasks that can have higher priority.
The next mission could start in November 2023 but the date will only be established precisely in some time. It will be the first of six missions ordered by NASA in March 2022, adding to the already existing contract with Northrop Grumman to resupply the International Space Station. It will also be the first of three missions involving the use of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket while waiting for the new version of the Antares rocket to be ready.
Northrop Grumman is also working on further improvements to its Cygnus space freighter. The company’s plans are tied to an expansion of the market, as they include plans to build commercial space stations. For a decade, the cargo spacecraft originally developed and Antares rocket Orbital Sciences were used only for resupply missions to the International Space Station, but that could change dramatically in the coming years.
A crucial progress for the Cygnus cargo spacecraft will be in the possibility to dock directly with a space station, as a robotic arm is a very sophisticated tool and its availability on a space station can’t be taken for granted.
